The Organization of Rome's Wine Trade by Alexander Conison A dissertation submitted in partial ...

279 Pages·2012·3.03 MB·English

The Organization of Rome’s Wine Trade

by

Alexander Conison

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Greek and Roman History)
in the University of Michigan
2012

Doctoral Committee:

Professor Bruce W. Frier, Chair
Professor David S. Potter
Professor Nicola Terrenato
Professor Raymond H. Van Dam
Acknowledgements

This project has relied on the help, directly and indirectly, of my many colleagues,
advisors, and friends here at the University of Michigan. But my space here is short, and
it is altogether impossible to describe the suggestions, questions, and conversations held
in the Classics department, Ann Arbor bars, and friends’ homes which have allowed me
to bring this project to completion. First, the financial and intellectual support given me
by the University of Michigan and the Interdepartmental Program in Greek and Roman
History has been beyond generous. My fellow students in IPGRH, IPCAA, and Classical
Philology are among the most pleasant, intelligent, and entertaining group of colleagues
one could hope for. I owe, in addition, singular debts of gratitude to the following
people: Ben Acosta-Hughes; Alex Angelov; Michelle Biggs; H.D. Cameron; David, Jay,
& Nancy Conison; Kevin Dicus; Bruce Frier; Traianos Gagos; Charlotte Maxwell-Jones;
Raji Mittal; Jason Parnell; Davorka “Seki” Radovcic; Jon Rowland; Gina Soter; Ray Van
Dam. Brief words here could not possibly do justice to the many ways, great and small,
you all have impacted my life over the last six years.

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………………………………..ii
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...v
Chapter
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1
“Wandering Drunk on the Shore” ................................................. 1
A Brief History of Wine’s Diffusion Among the Romans ............... 6
II. Methods and Models for the Study of Roman Wine ....................................... 20
Free-Market or Embedded Trade? .............................................. 20
“At the Distancce of Centuries…” ................................................ 31
Models ......................................................................................... 39
Sources ........................................................................................ 49
“These fragments I have shorn…” ............................................... 64
III. The Scope of the Roman Wine Firm ............................................................... 67
“The Price was Inviting” .............................................................. 67
Business Organizations and Asset Partitioning ........................... 76
“Everything is in the Power of the Contracting Parties…” ........ 100
Conclusion ................................................................................. 119
IV. Wine Production ........................................................................................... 122
“Quality, Quality, Quality: What is Quality to Me?” ................. 122
Differences between the Roman and Medieval Wine-Trade .... 143
“Surplus-Producing Areas” and International Trade ................. 153
Conclusions ................................................................................ 163
V. The Problem of Storage ................................................................................. 168
“The Most Precious Gift to the Temperate and Rational Man” 168
An Overview of Urban Storage .................................................. 172
Ostia .......................................................................................... 176
Storage at Rome ........................................................................ 194
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VI. Dynamism in the Roman Wine Trade ........................................................... 208
Cellae and Horrea: Why the Distinction? .................................. 208
A Simple Model of Storage ........................................................ 217
Locking Devices: Technological Development .......................... 221
Locking Devices: Legal Developments ....................................... 230
“Keys to the Kingdom of God…” ................................................ 246
VII. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 249
Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 256

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List of Figures
Figure
2.1 Ratio of Rome’s Consumption........................................................................27
2.2 Institutional Analysis.......................................................................................47
3.1 Vendor-Buyer Game......................................................................................118
4.1 Areas of Wine Production..............................................................................145
4.2 Roman Senator Provenance...........................................................................162
4.3 Moving Percentage of Wine and Senators.....................................................163
4.4 Distribution of Amphora Provenance at Ostia...............................................164
5.1 Unnamed Corridor Horrea.............................................................................174
5.2 Courtyard Horrea...........................................................................................175
5.3 Horrea Lolliana..............................................................................................175
5.4 Ostian Corridor Horrea..................................................................................181
5.5 Unexcavated Ostian Horrea...........................................................................181
5.6 Ostian Courtyard Horrea................................................................................182
5.7 Caseggiato dei Doli........................................................................................184
5.8 Dolia Defossa (Via di Anno).........................................................................185
5.9 Dolia Defossa (V.XI.5)..................................................................................186
5.10 Deposito di Olii............................................................................................187
5.11 Interior Spatial Distribution.........................................................................189
5.12 Significance of Difference...........................................................................190
5.13 Horrea at Nauportus.....................................................................................192
5.14 Roman Horrea Type.....................................................................................198
5.15 Roman non-Horrea storage facility..............................................................198
5.16 Insulae, Domus, and Horrea densities at Rome...........................................200
5.17 Cellae vinariae Nova et Arruntina...............................................................203
6.1 Appreciation-depreciation equilibrium..........................................................219
6.2 Risk allocation curve for storage...................................................................220
6.3 Average key lengths.......................................................................................229

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Chapter I
Introduction

“Wandering Drunk on the Shore”
Roman authors cared little about the drinking habits of Rome’s general
population.1 There was no Roman Charles Buxton, who in an 1868 jeremiad against
drunkenness, argued that, “the best thing…for the improvement of the morals of the
working classes…was the closing of the public houses on the Saturday night” and that
“undoubtedly the State can do much to lessen the temptation to drunkenness.”2 The
upper-class Romans declaimed through their silence a rousing “who cares” when
responding to the habits (drinking and otherwise) of the lower social orders.
Nevertheless, glimmers of light emerge from that general obscurity and make clear that,
as in later societies, drinking in quantity was commonplace among Rome’s population by
the high Classical age.
This silence on lower-class drinking initially seems especially surprising because
Roman authors certainly observed and at times criticized alcohol’s effects on their peers.
As early as the mid-2nd century BCE, a certain Gaius Titius argued for the passage of the
Lex Fannia, a sumptuary law, because so many men were carrying out business in the
Forum while drunk.3 Cicero likewise inveighed against his opponents by accusing them

1 Noted by D’Arms (1995: 304-17).
2 Buxton (1868: 27, 54).
3 Macrob. Sat. 3.16.14-15: describens enim homines prodigos in forum ad iudicandum ebrios commeantes,
quaeque soleant inter se sermocinari sic ait: ludunt alea studiose, delibuti unguentis, scortis stipati.…inde
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of drunkenness and identified such drunkenness as a form of insanity.4 Such aspersions
were not uncommon: Seneca criticized one of Caesar’s assasins, Tillius Cimber, for being
a violent drunkard, and the young Octavian used Antony’s association with Dionysus as
an excuse to accuse him of orgiastic drunkenness.5 The vast majority of references to
drunkenness was in reference to upper-class behavior and is usually indistinguishable
from broader, moralizing observation and criticism.
Yet the ancient sources are not wholly silent on drinking among Rome’s
populace. The lengthiest description comes from the 4th century historian, Ammianus
Marcellinus. Visiting Rome with the emperor Constantius II, he described the frivolity of
Rome’s upper classes and then offered a precious description of Romans’ propensity to
drink:
Ex turba vero imae sortis et paupertinae in tabernis aliqui pernoctant
vinariis, non nulli velariis umbraculorum theatralium latent…aut
pugnaciter aleis certant turpi sono fragosis naribus introrsum reducto
spiritu concrepantes; aut quod est studiorum omnium maximum ab ortu
lucis ad vesperam sole fatiscunt vel pluviis, per minutias aurigarum
equorumque praecipua vel delicta scrutantes

But from the throng of the lowest and impoverished class, some stay up all
night in wine shops, others lie in the shadows of the theaters’ sails; either
they compete rowdily at dice making a foul-sounding racket by their noisy
inhalations or in minutely appraising the strengths and defects of the
horses and charioteers—and they wear themselves out at this with the
greatest zeal from sunrise to sundown rain or shine.6

vadunt ad comitium ne litem suam faciant. Dum eunt, nulla est in angiporto amphora quam non impleant,
quippe qui vesicam plenam vini habeant.
4 E.g., Verr. 2.5.63.16; Pis. 13; Phil. 2.67.5, 2.105.18, 3.12.6.
5 Sen. Ep. 83.12. For Antony’s association with Dionysus and accusations of drunkenness, see Pliny HN
14.22, Scott (1929: 133-41) and Zanker (1988: 60).
6 XIV 6.25.
2
We cannot know the extent to which Ammianus’ rhetoric has exaggerated the drunken
idleness of Rome’s population, but it has the ring of truth.7 Somewhat earlier, for
example, he had mentioned civic unrest which had occurred because of a dearth of wine
(inopia vini), which roused the wine-greedy masses to drunken discords (motus crebri).8
We need not associate that description narrowly with late imperial Rome. The
first century author Seneca made reference to the debauches of the Roman population as
part of his broader disapproval of the morals of his age:9
…Voluptatis causa ac festorum dierum vestem mutavimus. Si te bene
novi, arbitri partibus functus nec per omnia nos similes esse pilleatae
turbae voluisses nec per omnia dissimiles: nisi forte his maxime diebus
animo imperandum est, ut tunc voluptatibus solus abstineat, cum in illas
omnis turba procubuit: certissimum enim argumentum firmitatis suae
capit, si ad blanda et in luxuriam trahentia nec id nec abducitur. Hoc multo
fortius est, ebrio ac vomitante populo siccum ac sobrium esse…

We have changed our clothing for the sake of pleasure and holidays. If I
know you well, having discharged the parts of judgment, you would have
wished neither to be wholly similar to the freeman crowd nor wholly
dissimilar. Unless it happens that on these days particularily the soul must
be enjoined that it alone then should abstain from pleasures, since the
whole throng hastens into them. For it will certainly find the strongest
argument for its constancy in not being led astray to alluring things and
thence to decadence. This is considerably stronger, to be dry and sober
while the populace is drunk and vomiting…

In a later letter, Seneca censured the behavior of vacationers at Baiae, asking
Lucilius why he would want to see drunks wandering the beach (videre ebrios per litora
errantes… quid necesse est).10 Although Baiae was a pleasure retreat for wealthy
Romans, not the urban poor, Seneca’s comparison of life at Baiae to one spent in a bar

7 On Ammianus at Rome, see Matthews (1989: 8-13).
8 XIV 6.1.
9 Ep. 18.2.
10 Ep. 51.4.
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(habitare…inter popinas) leaves little doubt that he was equating his peers’ comportment
with that of the denizens of Rome’s drunken haunts.11
These “gloomy” haunts (the word is Cicero’s) were a common if not generally
noteworthy feature of Rome’s urban fabric, a place where “the cheapest of men” whiled
away the hours.12 Horace contrasted his own love of the country life with his bailiff who
loved the city’s “oily bars and wine taverns” (uncta popina incutiunt urbis desiderium…
vicina subest vinum praebere taberna).13 When Martial praised Domitian for cleaning up
Rome, he particularly applauded his sweeping away the “dark bars had taken up entire
streets” (occupat aut totas nigra popina vias).14
Pompeian architectural remains and preserved graffiti add to that impressionistic
tableau culled from stray literary references. Though the total number of hospitality
establishments in Pompeii is debated, the lesser estimate is of ninety-four establishments
that served food and drink (popinae and tabernae), forty-two that had rooms for lodgers
and may have served food and drink (hospitium and cauponae), nine lodging houses with
stables for horses (stabula), and forty-seven of indeterminate function.15 Pompeii’s
estimated population was only 10,000-12,000 people and would have therefore had
roughly one drinking establishment for every hundred people.16 A similar density in

11 Ibid. See D’Arms (2003: 52) for an introduction to Baiae and its ill-reputed licentiousness.
12 Pis. 18: tenebricosa popina. Sen. Prov.: cum illo tempore vilissimus quisque in popina lateat.
13 Ep. 1.14.21-24.
14 Epigramm. 7.61.
15 DeFelice (2007: 483).
16 This is a higher density than any modern city I can find by order of magnitudes: Chicago, a city of about
2.7 million people has about 1800 active bars (see the list assembled at www.chibarproject.com), a ratio
of 1:1500 bars/person.
4
Rome would imply a total number of 7,500-10,000 drinking establishments, enough that
Martial’s image of their taking over whole streets does not seem totally absurd.17
The Pompeian graffiti provide examples of the activities of those who frequented
these establishments. The writer of one graffito cursed the innkeeper (copo) who sold
water while he himself drinks merum (wine mixed the honey).18 We learn of a self-
proclaimed body of seribibi—late night drinkers—who frequented one drinking
establishment.19 A certain Festus, for example, commemorated his and his friends’ sexual
frolics at an inn (Festus hic futuit cum sodalibus),20 which reminds one of the late-night
revels at the deversorium in the Satryricon, all washed down by copious Falernian wine
(vino etiam Falerno inundamur).21
Excessive drinking led to its own set of problems: Another inscription records a
guest’s apologies for wetting the bed.22 This inscription might raise a wry smile, but the
Digest, in fact, preserves an excerpt, in a title dealing with drunken slaves, on drunken
bed-wetters.23 No surprise that when Pliny lamented humanity’s inventiveness at
discovering new ways to become drunk, it was not restricted to any one class of people.24
The humorous pomposity of the Pompeian inscription that invokes mater Ebria—Mother
Drunkenness—is the final reminder that drinking, often heavily by our standards—must
have been a common feature of urban life for all classes, as it was in 18th century France

17 The projection based on an estimated population of 750,000-1,000,000 people during the 1st two
centuries CE. See below for further on Rome’s population.
18 CIL IV 3948.
19 CIL IV 581.
20 CIL IV 3935.
21 Petron. Sat. 21.
22 CIL IV 4957.
23 D. 21.1.14.4.
24 HN 14.14.
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